


the hand of the beholder

by logictron



Category: The Brave (TV 2017)
Genre: Edgeplay, F/M, Knives, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 18:10:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logictron/pseuds/logictron
Summary: There’s a knife and nothing else matters. Just the blade, and Amir’s steady hand wrapped around the handle, and suddenly the room is ice cold.PLEASE SEE NOTES.





	the hand of the beholder

**Author's Note:**

> I promise to go back to posting regular things after this. This idea's been lurking for a long, long time. This is definitely the darkest/kinkiest thing I've written for this fandom. It technically takes place in the "harvester of light" verse but I am not attaching it to that formally. It can be read as a standalone and it will not impact the overall storyline if it's not read.
> 
> There are many, many, many ways to work through trauma. Everyone's trauma is unique. Everyone's recovery looks different. This is just my take on Hannah's.
> 
> Also, my general soapbox moment here because, anytime I write anything containing kink, it must be said: Kink, by definition, meets the qualifications of being "safe, sane, and consensual". There's still some wiggle room in there. Knifeplay definitely fits in the grey area. See the end of the fic for more notes on that.
> 
> Also, one last note that, beyond Hannah's memories (where it is generalized and vague), there is no blood here.

There’s a knife and nothing else matters. Just the blade, and Amir’s steady hand wrapped around the handle, and suddenly the room is ice cold. Suddenly, she can feel the warm trickle of blood on her skin. And she’s been triggered a fair number of times in his presence but never _by_ him. This is different.

 

“Hannah,” he says, steady and calm, setting the knife down next to the sink, turning off the stove before approaching her slowly. “Look at me. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe.”

 

And she hears him, but she’s not listening. There’s buzzing in her head, like static, and her scars are burning like when they were fresh, and she can smell the blood. Her blood. Hannah’s not in her kitchen. She’s in the dirt on the side of the road in Mexico. It takes much too long for help to arrive. And it’s all her fault.

 

Time distorts and Hannah has no concept of how long it takes for the memories to fade and reality to start bleeding through. But she’s curled so tightly in on herself on the kitchen floor that her muscles ache. She’s shaking. Everything feels dim and fuzzy. Nausea creeps in and Hannah makes herself breathe.

 

Amir is there, sitting a few feet away, watching her. There’s nothing in his eyes or his posture that betrays his calm exterior. He’s okay. He understands. But all Hannah feels is rage in the face of his calm. He shouldn’t have to understand. He should be able to cook dinner, to chop vegetables, without her spinning out. If only she wasn’t so fucking broken. If only she could just put the past behind her.

 

He’s dead. She says it to her reflection every morning. Some days a blessing, some a curse. Tonight, she wishes he were still here, only so she could imagine watching him die.

 

The darkness makes her shudder, and it’s not from disgust.

 

**

 

It takes three days for Hannah to recover, for the adrenaline to subside and the ache in her muscles to fade. Three days for her to stop imagining the knife in her hand with Urzua’s blood spilling under her fingers. Three days for her to stop hungering for it.

 

And when she does, there’s only quiet anger. She’s still broken. No matter how many times she picks herself up and glues herself back together. Scars like hers don’t fade.

 

Amir notices. He has to. She flinches away from him anytime he reaches for her, even when his touch comes with a gentle warning. Because as hard as she’ tries, now the image of the knife in his hand is embedded in her mind. He’d die before hurting her, has only ever been gentle and perfect and caring. He’s never once been apologetic or pitying. He’s only seen her as strong. And she hates that now, because it’s a blatant lie.

 

He can pour as much love into her as he wants; right now, she’s sliced clean open and all of it spills straight out of her, leaving Hannah just as broken and empty as before.

 

“How can I help you?” he asks. Then, “It’s okay if you don’t know.”

 

Hannah shakes her head and thinks of the knife and remembers his hands, and it makes her feel things she shouldn’t be feeling.

 

**

 

In therapy, it’s the only thing she wants to talk about--the confusion, how the present and the past have melded so seamlessly that she can’t untwine them anymore--but the words stick in her throat, so she sits in silence and picks at the sleeve of her sweater until there’s only five minutes left of the appointment. 

 

And then she says, “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.” After that, the words unstick. She doesn’t stop talking for 30 minutes straight.

 

“Taking control of your fear can be useful, certainly,” her therapist says. She doesn’t look any more concerned than usual. “We can talk about this more next week.”

 

She can’t wait seven more days. Living like this is making her exhausted and unstable. But she doesn’t say that. Her appointment’s gone over as is. Hannah is done making other people accountable to her trauma.

**

 

“I need you to do something for me,” she says. The drive home has done nothing to diminish her resolve.

 

“Of course. Anything.” Amir closes his book and levels her with a patient gaze.

 

Hannah wonders if his definition of ‘anything’ includes what she’s going to ask. This time, his unflappable exterior cracks a bit, but not in the way she’s expecting. Something shifts in him at her request and it’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

 

“Go to the bedroom. I’ll be right there.”

 

If not for the anticipation, she might’ve collapsed in relief. She’s taking control. No more letting fear rule. It stops today.

 

The thought makes her feel incredibly powerful.

 

**

 

In the bedroom, the air is cool. The sheets are twisted and crumpled, the results of another nightmare. Amir’s been sleeping across the hall. Her chest aches with missing him.

 

“Hannah,” he says softly. She can feel him lingering in the doorway. “I need to know that you’re sure.”

 

“I love you. I trust you. I’m done being scared of a ghost.”

 

Amir moves past her without touching her. He sets something on the nightstand and she knows instantly what it is. Fear edges in and she tamps it down.

_Not today._

 

“Hey.” He’s standing in front of her now, still not touching, but there’s a different kind of tension in that now. “I love you too.”

 

She knows. She _knows_. But it seeps out of her anyway. She’s not ready. But she will be.

 

**

 

He takes his time, makes the room warmer, dims the lights, draws the curtains. He tells her to strip while he fixes the bed. It’s the means to an end and not meant as a seductive request. But when she’s done and the sheets are pulled down, Amir looks at her in something like hunger. It’s nothing like she’s ever seen before, and it almost scares her.

 

“Should I--” she starts, but he cuts her off.

 

“No. Just like that.”

 

Hannah swallows and watches him reach for the nightstand. She knows what he’s doing, obviously. It’s what she asked of him. But watching him with the knife still makes her tremble visibly. There’s hunger, still, in his eyes. And for all the power she’d felt asking him for this, he looks much more powerful.

 

“Can you keep still?” he asks, his thumb almost stroking the top of the blade. She can’t stop staring at it, her heart racing, though she stays here with him. Present.

 

“I don’t know.” Hannah closes her eyes to break the spell cast by the knife, by his hand steadying the blade. The same hand that has tenderly squeezed her own, brushed away her tears,, broken her apart in pleasure so blinding she’s never known anything like it. And now she’s entrusting it--him--with this paralyzing, all-consuming fear. She trusts Amir, wholly. Trusting herself is another matter.

 

“Look at me.” The command isn’t cold, exactly, but it’s firm in a way she’s never heard from him before. When she does look, he moves closer. 

 

“Amir.”

 

“Trust me.” He lifts the knife away from her; it still sends a rush of _something_ through her. The cold flash of fear mingles with the heat of wanting, and Hannah finds herself dizzy. “The power isn’t here. You know that.” With his left index finger, he taps the tip of the blade. “The power is here.” He indicates his other hand, still comfortably curled around the handle.

 

“I know,” she whispers, swallowing. The longer she looks at the knife, the more her anxiety subsides. He just waits, the way she knew he would.

 

“Close your eyes,” he says. It’s easier to comply now, somehow. But her heart still races.

 

The kiss should come as less of a surprise. Hannah can feel him moving closer, can smell the familiar faint trace of his cologne, but his lips on hers still make her gasp in surprise. She doesn’t pull away, though, and neither does he, until she relents and melts into his mouth. It’s his thumb dragging over the scar on her neck that sends her reeling--not exactly triggered, but fear definitely overtakes the quiet arousal that’s been building.

 

“You’re supposed to keep still,” he whispers, stroking the scar again, and then a third time, slower and more deliberate, drawing a broken whimper from Hannah’s throat. “Do you want to stop?”

 

“No.”

 

“Lie down, Hannah.” That tone again. He slips into it so effortlessly.

 

Without asking, she knows to lay on her stomach. She asked for this, after all. So she settles as best she can on the bed, tense. The static buzz is back, but it lulls her now instead of sending her into a panic. When Amir’s hand skims the dip of her spine, she doesn’t startle. It’s progress.

 

“You can ask me to stop. I’ll always stop,” Amir promises, sounding like himself again temporarily.

 

“I know. I won’t.” Backing down now is unthinkable. Urzua won’t win. Her past won’t win.

 

“Close your eyes,” he says again. Like this, it makes her more vulnerable. She’s strong, but he has so much leverage on her here. Before she can think about it, Hannah’s shaking again. 

 

Amir’s hand slides up her spine until it’s almost between her shoulder blades. The bed shifts with his weight as he leans into her, holding her down, stilling her. Briefly, Hannah wonders if he’s going to make her wait for it. The anticipation might kill her.

 

And then, suddenly, the cold press of the knife is at the top of her spine, just over his hand, and she shudders so hard the bed creaks. Fear surges, but it seems to run out of her instead of lingering. There’s no accompanying sting, no heat, no warm stickiness from blood.

That’s the part she thinks she’ll never forget, how the pain hadn’t come right away. How all she’d felt was searing heat, how it wasn’t until she saw the blood dripping from the blade that she realized how much damage had been done. That was before they put the knife to her throat and made her beg for her life.

 

The cold of the metal warms and Hannah finds her breath just as Amir moves the knife again, bringing her back, following the ridge of bone of her shoulder blade until it reaches a scar. She sucks in a breath, then, as Amir changes course, following the scar, pinning her more firmly as he moves lower.

 

“God,” she breathes, barely audible over the rush in her ears. He moves on to the next one, methodical and unyielding. By the third, the fear is drained out of her. There’s only a sharp kind of heat that makes her desperate. It’s hard to keep still for an entirely different reason.

 

The kinfe’s edge lingers over her last scar, the one closest to the base of her spine. Amir leans over her, then, his mouth next to her ear. 

 

“One more,” he whispers, and she has to think through her fog to realize he’s talking about her neck. The fear crawls back in, though it’s muted now. Her brain is too muddled to make any sense of it.

 

Though the metal has warmed since they’d started, it’s still cold on her skin. She still jerks, still has to squeeze her eyes shut to stop from opening them. But as it slips just shy of her pulse, following the raised edge of her scar, a muffled moan escapes. She came so close to dying. So, so close. But she’s here. She won.

 

“Tell me,” he whispers.

 

“Touch me,” she pleads, her voice rasping in her desperation.

 

“Do you want to beg?” His question is earnest, and, like his cue to undress, isn’t meant to be seductive, but right now, it sends a shock of heat skittering down her spine. Amir _knows_ her. There are so many parts of her that she’s entrusted to him. Somehow, it makes her feel safer. She nods and he kisses her cheek, a brief reminder that he’s still just him. They’re still here, in her bedroom.

 

With his lips still pressed to her cheek, Amir draws the knife down her spine, pausing at the small of her back. Hannah whimpers softly, her hips shifting as much as they dare.

 

“Please…” Her mouth forms the word without a second thought. “Please, touch me…”

 

The knife disappears and Hannah almost misses it, but then his fingers are gently prodding at her thigh until she parts them further. She’s almost embarrassingly wet. Even Amir’s breath hitches audibly. But his touch stays frustratingly where it is, inches from where she aches him.

 

“I need you,” she whispers. “Amir, _please_...”

 

He grants her reprieve at that, at least temporarily, his hand sliding up the back of her thigh until the edge of his index finger brushes over her. Hannah cries out, burying her face in her elbow, restlessly seeking friction or pressure or _anything_.

 

“Is this not enough?” he murmurs in her ear, kneeling over her without missing a beat. “Is this not what you asked for?”

 

Hannah whines, tries to move, and finds herself still held down, still helpless to him. 

 

“Is this what you want?” Amir whispers, working just one finger into her. The woefully inadequate tease has her fisting the sheets in frustration.

 

“More,” she begs.”Please. I need it...I need you…” Her cheeks are suddenly wet with tears, and if she wasn’t so lost in what he’s doing to her, she might’ve been shocked.

 

The tears seem to do it, though, and he adds another finger, stopping her again when she tries to move.

 

“Trust me,” he says again, withdrawing only to fill her again, his movements maddeningly slow. And Hannah wants to tell him she can’t come like this, no matter how desperate she is or how good his fingers feel. But he adds a third finger and she breaks unexpectedly, the pleasure radiating through her in slow waves, washing away the lingering fear.

 

When it subsides, Hannah can’t speak. Everything is hazy and she feels like she’s floating. It’s exactly like having a panic attack, except there’s an overwhelming feeling of warmth and safety filling the space where only fear and loneliness had lived before.

 

Amir gathers her in his arms and moves her gently, pulling the sheet over her and then lifting the knife off the nightstand, tucking it safely into the drawer instead. And the sight doesn’t scare her, because he’s right: the knife holds no power. The power is in the hand of the beholder. And that’s a power she’ll willingly give to him any day.

**Author's Note:**

> So, since this was all in Hannah's head and not in Amir's, Amir didn't use the blade of the knife ever. You can play mindgames pretty easily when it comes to anything sensory. He used the handle of the knife instead. Using a blade is...questionable in integrity as there's no guarantee of safety there. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for sticking with me!! Tomorrow (or maybe Saturday/Sunday), there will be Jalton and I will make it worth your while. I promise. :)


End file.
